The Green Zones

Where failed states work.

In the cool air-conditioning of the Silverbird Galleria mall in Lagos, Nigeria, it is hard to remember that you are in the 15th-most failed state in the world. The chic coffee shops and designer clothes oddly befit Africa’s newest financial hub, where business suits and talk of the latest market returns are ubiquitous. This elegant enclave on Lagos’s Victoria Island—less than an hour’s plane ride from the rebel-infested creeks of the oil-producing region—is no anomaly, either for Nigeria or for many failed states. Many such countries have shining capital cities or thriving commercial centers, while festering pockets of instability lurk elsewhere. Ethnic separatists might set rural areas ablaze while coastal elites build office parks. Even the worst failed states have enclaves that thrive.

SOMALIA The northern enclave of Somaliland has little to recommend it. Poverty is endemic; unemployment is on the rise; and six refugee camps are strewn across the regional capital of Hargeisa. Then again, says Human Rights Watch’s Christopher Albin-Lackey, “Compare it to Somalia, and Somaliland is paradise.” Since declaring autonomy in 1991, Somaliland has held elections, created a functioning government, and carved out a semblance of peace in a country where anarchy reigns. Geography and history have something to do with it. Somaliland, which forms the upper arc of Somalia’s boomerang shape on the Horn of Africa, was ruled by the British until 1960, while the rest of the country fell into Italian hands. But perhaps a more important factor is what Lackey calls “a real obsession with maintaining peace for the sake of peace” in a country that has known little of it. The suicide attacks in October on foreign and U.N. missions in Hargeisa make clear that one shouldn’t be too optimistic. As Somaliland approaches its elections in 2009, however, it has a far less grim outlook than neighboring areas to the south. Unlike the national capital of Mogadishu, at least Hargeisa has foreign missions.

SUDAN For the last half decade, the Sudanese capital Khartoum has been a boomtown. In 2008, oil revenues were projected to reach an annual $7 billion, bankrolling roads, large-scale agriculture and dam projects, a revamped rail network, and even a new international airport that, at $1.3 billion, would be one of Africa’s largest. The country entered last year expecting to construct 11,000 luxury apartments and villas before 2013 for the growing ranks of the wealthy. Even now, investors from China, India, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates are interested. This growth has been focused in the north, long the locus of power in Sudan. “It is common to compare the riverine areas [in the north] to a middle-income country,” says François Grignon, Africa program director at the International Crisis Group. It’s everywhere else, where government and foreign investment are rare, that makes Sudan one of the world’s most failed states. In fact, the wealth in and around Khartoum helped prime the grievances that provoked conflicts in the south and west, analysts say. While all the fancy building was going on in the capital, the basics needed for survival—water, electricity, and security—were missing elsewhere.

PAKISTAN Towering over the rest of the North-West Frontier Province, Chitral stands out for more than just its 3,700 feet of elevation. The scenic mountain district of 220,000 is a relative bastion of calm surrounded by Afghanistan’s most troubled regions on one side and Pakistan’s on the other. So safe is Chitral that when the snow thaws each July, the town’s polo courts (the world’s highest in altitude) host a renowned three-day tournament. “If Swat Valley used to be the Switzerland of Pakistan,” says the New America Foundation’s Parag Khanna, “Chitral really still is.” How did Chitral stay serene as Swat fell to the Taliban? Governance has little to do with Chitral’s success, Khanna says. It’s geography: Far from the agricultural heartland and natural resources, the district serves as a gateway into nearby Afghanistan and China. Due to snowpack, the area is isolated from Pakistan for much of the year, with just one road linking it to the rest of the increasingly chaotic country. The town’s people are equally distinct. Most are of Kho ethnicity and hence remain aloof from the province’s ethnic tensions. With any luck, remote Chitral will avoid the Talibanization afflicting the rest of Pakistan.

Related Stories

Robert I. RotbergRobert I. Rotberg is director of the Kennedy School of Government's program on intrastate conflict and conflict resolution, and president of the World Peace Foundation. | Special Report |

0 Shares

0 Shares

Blake Hounshell is managing editor at Foreign Policy, having formerly been Web editor. Hounshell oversees ForeignPolicy.com and has commissioned and edited numerous cover stories for the print magazine, including National Magazine Award finalist "Why Do They Hate Us?" by Mona Eltahawy.
He also edits The Cable, FP's first foray into daily original reporting, and was editor of Colum Lynch's Turtle Bay, which in 2011 won a National Magazine award for best reporting in a digital format.

A graduate of Yale University, Blake speaks mangled Arabic and French, is an avid runner, and lives in Washington with his wife, musician Sandy Choi, and their toddler, David. Follow him on Twitter @blakehounshell.